Today -100: January 6, 1926: Of killer cops, cells, crowns prince, and sensational trashy periodical literature

Samuel Kranin, a Brooklyn glazier, goes to the police station to report that a patrolman beat him up in his store after he refused his demand for $2. After he picks the cop, John J. Brennan, out of a lineup, Brennan shoots him dead. The police surgeon says Brennan is drunk.

Hungarian authorities make many arrests in a conspiracy of fascist types, anti-Semites & royalists, including the chief of state police and Prince Ludwig Windish-Graetz, to counterfeit French francs to use to create a dictatorship and make Prince Albrecht king, displacing “Regent” Miklós Horthy. The Princess Windish-Graetz is assured by the head jailer that her husband is occupying “the best cell in the building.” Most of the police work in uncovering this plot was done by the French.

Romanian Crown Prince Carol drops the “crown prince” business and is now calling himself Scarlat Mondstireanu, which is just a fun name. The royal family will pay his past debts but not support him financially in the future.

Columbia University president Nicholas Murray Butler gives his annual speech to the students, denouncing “sensational trashy periodical literature,” which cultivated types of people should ignore because life is just too short. He doesn’t seem to specify what literary elements make for such garbage lit, but we do know that in 1941 he will personally block Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls from winning the Pulitzer,  calling it “offensive and lascivious.”

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Today -100: January 5, 1926: Worthless parliamentarians are the worst kind of parliamentarians.

William Hale and Ernest Burkhart are arrested in Oklahoma for their role in a plot that murdered Osage Indians to steal their oil money. Hale & Burkhart are played by, respectively, Robert de Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos declares the Greek constitution null and void, saying “the whole nation is tired of worthless parliamentarians.”

The New Haven, Connecticut Klan disbands after finding itself at odds with the national Klan, which New Haven secretary Arthur Mann calls the “greatest organization of graft known,” which signs up “riffraff,” anarchists and radicals for the $10 membership fee.

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Today -100: January 4, 1926: Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles

Gen. Theodoros Pangalos, prime minister of Greece since June, declares himself dictator at a banquet of the Democratic guard, which is just sarcastic if you ask me. “Parliamentary government is the cause of all our troubles,” he declares.

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Today -100: January 3, 1926: I am glad the family kicked him out

Trotsky is elected to the Politburo. Stalin is re-elected as party general secretary.

A Pittsburgh Common Pleas Court judge rejects North Carolina’s request for the extradition of a black man on liquor charges after the judge is informed that he was indicted by a grand jury from which black people are excluded.

While some Romanians now think that Crown Prince Carol was forced to abdicate after participating in a plot to overthrow his father, King Ferdinand, he announces that he will divorce Princess Helen, which will be complicated because the marriage was Greek Orthodox. Carol is expected to look for a job in aviation. He’s been holed up in a hotel in Milan in which a Romanian woman is also staying, but is it his former wife or is it his mistress? Who can say. His brother Nicholas, who’s been living in Paris and is perhaps miffed that the belief there that he was the heir to the Romanian throne, which he did not contradict, has been refuted, says “Carol has done an unforgivable thing, and I am glad the family kicked him out.”

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Today -100: January 2, 1926: How much intelligence is the world prepared for?

Romanians are perplexed at Crown Prince Carol’s abdication. Some think it’s a woman thing, although they incorrectly assume the woman is the wife his family forced him to put aside, others think it’s about a scandal when he was chief of military aviation and it purchased some decrepit planes from France. His abdication letter says he won’t return to Romania for 6 years and after that only with the permission of the king and Parliament. 

Professor McDuff of Armstrong College, Durham University warns the Eugenics Educational Society that the white-collar labor market would become congested if the average intelligence were increased. “The world is not organized or prepared for a much higher level of intelligence than it already has.”

Only one person is killed trying to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadina, falling off the top of a building, but a grand stand collapses, injuring 235. Another woman dies of a cerebral hemorrhage watching the collapse.

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Today -100: January 1, 1926: Profane parasitical constructions are the worst kind of constructions

Romanian Crown Prince Carol, who left the country to attend Queen Alexandra’s funeral in November and never came back, renounces his right to succeed to the throne, all his other royal rights, and his membership in the royal family. His father accepts super-fast. This has something to do with the married prince’s affair with the divorcee he later married, Magda Lupescu (this is not widely known yet). Carol married someone else in 1918 but the royal family annulled it. His 4-year-old son Michael will be the new heir to the throne.

The NAACP says there were 18 lynchings in the US in 1925. Mississippi had 6, Florida 3, Georgia 2, with 1 each in Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia, and Utah. 2 were burned to death. The article does not give a racial breakdown, though I’ll bet the NAACP did.

Mussolini wants to make Rome great again: “Rome must again become the wonder of the whole world.” He plans to demolish the houses (“parasitical constructions”) and “the contamination of tramways” around the Pantheon and other ancient sites, including Christian temples, to create large squares around them, create wide boulevards á la Haussmann, and do it all within five years.

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Today -100: December 31, 1925: Of pensions, fevers, longevity, and inventions

John Hylan resigns as New York City mayor one day before his term expires, which for some convoluted reason is the only way he gets a pension ($4,205 a year). Outgoing Police Commissioner Richard Enright does the same ($5,000). Temps will fill in for 24 hours.

Commerce Sec Herbert Hoover warns against the “fever of speculation” in stocks and real estate. Well I’m sure he’ll fix all that. He’s also against buying by instalment plan.

Dr. Hornell Hart of Bryn Mawr College tells an American Sociological Society meeting that by the year 2000 humans will live to 100 on average and some to 200. Hart lived to 78.

Nils Aasen, Norwegian inventor of both the hand grenade and the anti-personnel mine, dies at 47 of tuberculosis brought on by a nervous breakdown. He was having trouble trying to invent an insomnia mask.

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Today -100: December 30, 1925: But I was opposed to blood-letting

The British are so excited that Princess Astrid of Sweden – “according to an unnamed Swedish diplomat, she is one of the prettiest girls in Europe” (and what better judges of feminine pulchritude can there be than unnamed Swedish diplomats, I ask you) – will be visiting Buckingham Palace, so they’ve decided she’ll probably marry Prince Edward. She won’t. She’s 20, he’s 31.

Headline of the Day -100:

No one’s heard from Leon Trotsky in a while, but at the Communist Congress when Zinoviev reminds everyone that last year Trotsky was accused of semi-Menshevism – semi-Menshevism! – he pipes up “Correct!”. Stalin notes that he had opposed the demand by the Leningrad Committee, led by Zinoviev and Kamenev, who are now at odds with Stalin, for Trotsky to be removed from the Politburo and the Communist Party: “They demanded blood, but I was opposed to blood-letting, thinking, before long what would be left of the party.” What indeed.

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Today -100: December 29, 1925: Murderous delirium is the worst kind of delirium

With the Radical members of the French Cabinet rebelling against PM Aristide Briand’s financial proposals, Briand threatens to throw them out of the Cabinet and form a new one in alliance with the Right Center.

Mexico bans marijuana which, we are informed, produces “murderous delirium. Its addicts often become insane.”

The District of Columbia bans horses on four major streets.

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Today -100: December 28, 1925: You’ve got to have a sense of humor if you’re going to live in that town, Philadelphia, anyway

Smedley Darlington Butler, former Philadelphia police chief, gives a blistering speech to the Adult Bible Classes Federation of Pennsylvania, calling Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick a “disloyal chief” who fired him because he insisted on going after big people as well as “little dummies” for Prohibition violations (you could be forgiven for reading his remarks about crime and thinking that Prohibition was the only law on the books). He says of Kendrick’s claim that he fired him because he didn’t give him proper respect: “No, I didn’t. I should have pulled his noise.” He says the fundamental issue today is “whether we Americans are to be governed by a lot of bootleggers and naturalized foreigners.” He bitches that the people of Philly (Pheople?) didn’t support him and are “getting about what they deserve.”

In the audience is Gov. Gifford Pinchot, who is said to want Butler to succeed him as governor, a plan Butler explicitly disclaims. Pinchot says Butler showed that a Man could enforce the law “even in Philadelphia.”

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Today -100: December 27, 1925: Turkish delight

The new Turkish Civil Code ends the right of husbands to unilaterally divorce their wives. Divorce will now be granted only by courts and only for cause – insanity, desertion, infidelity etc. This will not be applied retroactively to annul, say, the divorce that Turkish President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk decreed for himself in August.

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Today -100: December 26, 1925: Of greetings and non-pardons

German politicians including Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann (whose name the NYT gets wrong) send messages of Christmas greetings to the US, which were recorded on wax discs and broadcast on US radio stations. Americans were not used to hearing the voices of European leaders. The records also have songs from the Berlin State Opera. Part of the program was recorded in Stuttgart on a piano wire by the telegrapone process

California Gov. Friend Richardson rejects the practice of giving Christmas pardons, saying Californians will “enjoy this sacred day better with the knowledge that a score of murderers, robbers and pickpockets have not been turned loose upon them.”

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Today -100: December 25, 1925: If sorcery is outlawed, only outlaws will have sorcery

Pres. Harding’s widow Florence, who died a year ago, burned his papers after his death, we are just now hearing. Let the conspiracy theories begin!

A Mississippi grand jury indicts Coahoma County Sheriff Dr. S. W. Glass and 3 deputies for their role (unspecified here) in the lynching of a black man, Lindsey Coleman, after he was acquitted of murder.

Turkey bans sorcery.

A Christmas party hosted by the Italian gang at the Adonis Social and Athletic Club, a Brooklyn speakeasy, is rudely interrupted by the White Hand Gang and its leader, Richard “Peg-Leg” Lonergan. Tipped off in advance, the Italians and their special visiting guest Alfonse Capone kill four of the White Handers. Capone kills Lonergan personally and I guess the Italians keep Lonergan’s peg-leg as a trophy. This is the Adonis Club Massacre, although you’d think Christmas Massacre would have been better. It’s Capone’s first “massacre.” Capone will tell police that he was helping out as... the doorman.

Headline of the Day -100:

A heart attack, not some sort of Port Huron wicker man situation.

The Club Alabam’, off Broadway, offers a very blackface Xmas. Dinner de Luxe for 3 bucks, 6-9 pm, dancing from 10; god knows what happens between 9 & 10. Probably not a massacre.

The NYT Sunday Magazine will have, I guess this upcoming Sunday, an article on the Rhinelander v. Rhinelander trial.

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Today -100: December 24, 1925: Wherein is revealed the pest of our age

Pope Pius declares a new holiday (yay!): the Feast of Christ the King. The idea is that it will remind people of that obscure 1st-century chatterbox and combat “the pest of our age,” laicism, which lowers Christianity to the level of other religions, you know, the false ones. Also, the Catholic Church should have “independence from civil power.”

Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler claims he resigned as Philadelphia’s director of public safety not because he was ordered to by the Marines or because Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick had fired his ass, but because Kendrick demanded that he “lay off the big places” in Prohibition raids. He had wanted to padlock the Ritz-Carlton; places like that will be important to the city’s finances in the sesquicentennial year. The Smedster withdraws his resignation from the Marines.

The Ku Klux Klan, pissed off at the Salt Lake City ordinance against mask-wearing, protests against someone wearing false whiskers – FALSE WHISKERS! – while collecting for the poor dressed as Santa Claus. So Santa will no longer be allowed to stalk the streets of Salt Lake in disguise.

The NYT responds to American Federation of Labor Pres. William Green’s screed against Italian Fascism by suggesting that it’s American unions that are the real dictators. “John L. Lewis is the Mussolini of the United Mine Workers”, it says, for refusing to submit the coal strike to arbitration. And not just here: “England is threatened by the unsocial, uneconomic and anti-national exactions of labor unions.”

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Today -100: December 23, 1925: But I can still spit in their eye

Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler has been on leave from the Marines for two years in order to be director of safety (police chief) for Philadelphia. He’s militarized the cops, encouraged them to shoot “bandits,” armed firemen, and extended his Prohibition raids to the Ritz-Carlton and other major hotels, putting him at odds with politicians, including Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick. But he has been refused permission to extend his leave, which ends next week; he has orders to go to San Diego. He even went to Washington to ty to persuade Coolidge to change his mind, but Coolidge wouldn’t see him. He previously threatened to defy his orders to return to the Marines, but backed down. Now he reverses again and resigns from the Marines. So he’s a little surprised to learn, an hour later, that Mayor Kendrick has fired his ass. He tells reporters, “Now we are in the open. If the mayor fires me, I’ll be nothing after January 1. I’ll be neither a marine nor a policeman. But I can still spit in their eye.”

The American Federation of Labor warns unionists to oppose Fascist infiltration as strongly as they do Communists. AFL Pres. William Green says “Fascismo is endeavoring to instill that blighting philosophy among the people of every nation.”

Pres. Coolidge accepts the League of Nations invitation to join in preparing for a disarmament conference. 

Russia and Turkey sign a peace treaty. It’s only for three years.

The NYT suggests that Mussolini’s “Brilliant evocations of the glorious Roman past and of a glorious future may be a way of winning popular acquiescence in a galling present.”

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Today -100: December 22, 1925: We must choose between slavery and vodka

Some Italians claim that Mussolini’s purported intention to declare Italy an empire, which was reported as breaking news a couple of days ago – and a week before that – actually meant a spiritual and cultural rather than a territorial empire. The Italian embassy in the US calls the empire reports absurd, absolutely fantastic, and misleading.

The All-Russian Communist Congress divides over whether to suppress the kulaks. Bukharin is offended that the radicals, led by Zinoviev, take the highly unusual step of demanding the right to submit a minority report. Stalin says a few things I don’t understand, including “we must choose between slavery and vodka.”

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Today -100: December 21, 1925: Of the government of Wall Street, distressing methods, and battleships

Benjamin Gitlow, the Communist leader pardoned by NY Gov. Al Smith last week, gives a speech calling for foreign industrial and farm workers living in the US to unite with negroes to “overthrow the government of Wall Street.”

The French Chamber of Deputies approves PM Aristide Briand’s Syrian policy. Killing Syrian, his policy is killing Syrians, or as he puts it, “It was a cruel thing that France was obliged to maintain order by distressing methods.”

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin premieres at The Bolshoi.

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Today -100: December 20, 1925: Very little future for aviation

Noted futurist H.G. Wells, asked to write for Airways magazine on the future of air travel, responds that as he has found it “unpunctual, untrustworthy and inconsiderate to the ordinary passenger, there is very little future for aviation.”

We are also informed that British planes in the future will be made of metal, since the shortage of wood during the war restricted production. Another story today says houses will also be made of metal in Britain, because bricklayers are refusing to speed up to meet the housing shortage.

Jewish groups in Hungary oppose the World Court reviewing the Hungarian law restricting the proportion of “races” in colleges to their proportion in the population. They’re afraid to base a challenge to the law on outsiders and on the Treaty of Trianon, the much-hated treaty imposed on Hungary after the Great War. 

A Kansas judge issues a state-wide injunction against Klan parades in regalia.

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Today -100: December 19, 1925: Wiggle wiggle

During the Senate debate on the US joining the World Court, Sen. Irvin Lenroot (R-Wisc.) points out that the Republican 1924 platform called for just that. William Borah (R-Idaho) responds “if a man could be conceived who thought this was an injurious proposition or detrimental to his country and would still vote for it because his platform said so, he would be the slimiest creature that ever wiggled his was through the United States Senate.” A simple no would have sufficed.

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Today -100: December 18, 1925: Of insubordination, fascist menaces, and Christmas trees

Col. Billy Mitchell is convicted of insubordination for expressing views on military aviation contrary to those of his superiors and is suspended for 5 years.

The French government thinks the “Fascist menace” is dissipating. It helps that the French Fascists and the monarchists are now fighting (literally), with the latter now finally united behind a single pretender to the crown, from the Bourbon line of the royal family (ousted in 1830) rather than the Orléans line (1848).

Italy’s commissioner for South Tyrol, which was awarded to Italy after the Great War, reverses a decree, part of Italy’s attempt to suppress the German language and culture, banning Christmas trees.

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